Discovering the identity of the preserved teenage boy in the iron coffin (examiner.com) 

"...Just by the brand and the markings on the iron coffin, they were able to determine that the death had occurred in the 1850s. When the museum staff opened the mummy-style coffin, they found a well-preserved corpse dressed in the clothes of the era inside. Through bone analysis and with the use of MRIs and x-rays, they determined that they were looking at the remains of a teenage boy who had had a congenital heart defect (a hole in the heart) and who had likely died of pneumonia. Amazing that they were able to determine that over 150 years later! The staff then began combing historical records and obituaries of teenage boys who had died during that period of time in an attempt to give the corpse a name. They were able to narrow it down to three young men who had died during that time period. They then tried to identify their boy through the process of elimination, tracing each candidate’s maternal lineage to modern times and conducting DNA-testing on willing candidates they found through their genealogical investigation. (Each boy’s lineage was lucky enough to have an unbroken female line for mitochondrial DNA analysis – only the female passes the mDNA.) After two years of poring over historical documents and old newspapers and a few false turns along the way, the staff finally determined that the remains belonged to William T. White, an orphan who had died back in 1952 at the age of 15. Ultimately they were able to find a woman in Pennsylvania way down in the family line whose DNA matched up and confirmed White’s identity...." 

Minnesota professor helps researchers theorize about mummified dinosaur Leonardo (twincities.com) 

"It was only one day of work, but Dr. Arthur Aufderheide's observations gave researchers a valuable theory about a rare dinosaur discovery. Aufderheide, a professor of pathology at the University of Minnesota Duluth, took part in the research of Leonardo, the most complete dinosaur fossil ever discovered.... Leonardo, a Brachylophosaurus and member of the hadrosaur family, was found in Malta, Mont., in 2001. It was first mummified and then fossilized, so it's made of stone with some original tissue probably present. About 77 million years old, it is the only dinosaur found that still has fossilized skin covering a large portion of its body, and other preserved internal parts, including the stomach and its contents: magnolias, ferns and conifers. Aufderheide is a renowned expert and author of books in the field of paleopathology — the study of ancient diseases — and on the dissection of mummies. "We contacted Dr. Aufderheide because every time we wanted to get information about the process of mummification, which is not something paleontologists usually have to deal with ... mummy specialists anywhere in the U.S. at any university would point to Dr. Aufderheide," said Joe Iacuzzo, project manager for the Leonardo Project in Las Vegas. Aufderheide suggested to researchers that the area where Leonardo was found might have been swampy, because chemicals called aldehydes normally found in swamps can prevent decay.... The theory was important because researchers have wondered from the beginning: "Why did nothing eat him? Why did his flesh and internal structures not rot away like virtually every other fossil ever found up until Leonardo?" Iacuzzo said. "

Melting global ice likely to reveal yet more mummified secrets from the past (fresnobee.com) 

"Two bodies found in a Sierra Nevada glacier are the first ice mummies recovered in the lower 48 states. But people around the world have been finding frozen bodies for decades. These discoveries inspire both scientific interest and morbid curiosity: Who were these mummies? How did they die? How tall were they? What were they wearing? How did they wind up in the ice that preserved them for ages? As the climate warms, and glaciers melt, there probably will be more of these creepy but fascinating stories, experts say. "I'm sure more bodies are going to be found," said forensic anthropologist Paul Emanovsky, who examines remains for the U.S. military's Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command in Hawaii. Since the early 1990s, frozen bodies have been found in Europe, South America and Asia -- including, in 1999, that of George Mallory on Mount Everest. Mallory is the English explorer who died climbing Everest in the 1920s. Such ice mummies usually are created by accident: Someone dies in a place where extreme cold prevents bacteria and fungi from destroying the corpse -- often a glacier or an ice sheet. The body is slowly engulfed in ice. In the process, it dries out quickly in the thin, arid air at high elevations. Bacteria and fungi, which cause decay, can't grow where there is no water. And the tiny organisms do not survive at subfreezing temperatures...."

More info about glacier mummies and discoveries

"Melting alpine glaciers are revealing fascinating clues to Neolithic life in the high mountains. And, as a conference of archaeologists and climatologists meeting in the Swiss capital Berne has been discussing, the finds are also providing key indicators to climate change. Everyone knows the story of Oetzi the Ice Man, found in an Austrian glacier in 1991. Oetzi was discovered at an altitude of over 3,000m. He lived in about 3,300 BC, leading to speculation that the Alps may have had more human habitation than previously suspected. Now, more dramatic findings from the 2,756m Schnidejoch glacier in Switzerland have confirmed the theory. It all started at the end of the long hot summer of 2003, when a Swiss couple, hiking across a melting Schnidejoch, came across a piece of wood that aroused their curiosity. They took it down with them, and gave it to canton Berne's archaeological department, where careful examination and carbon dating revealed the piece of wood to be an arrow quiver made of birch bark, dating from about 3000 BC...."

More info about glacier mummies and discoveries

"The three 1,300-year-old mummies recently found in Huaca Pucllana ruins (Lima) were examined by X-rays yesterday to take a look inside these funeral bundles before opening and studying them. Head archaeologist Isabel Flores said X-rays would help determine the position of the human remains without cutting the mummies open. "The interesting thing about these mummies is that they are the first to be found intact in this archaeological site. The study of these mummies will help us learn more about the burial techniques of the Wari culture," Flores added. She mentioned that in the same place where these three mummies were unearthed, archaeologists noticed the presence of four more. It was reported that in the coming months more information would be provided about them. In addition, Peruvian archaeologist Isabel Flores noted that one of the primary goals was to have an on-site museum where these mummies and artifacts could be displayed. "

"On 2 December 2008, the British Museum will open a new Ancient Egyptian gallery centered round the spectacular painted tomb-chapel of Nebamun. The paintings are some of the most famous images of Egyptian art, and come from the now lost tomb-chapel of Nebamun, an accountant in the Temple of Amun at Karnak who died c. 1350 BC, a generation or so before Tutankhamun. They show him at work and at leisure - surveying his estates and hunting in the marshes. An extensive conservation project – the largest in the Museum’s history – has been undertaken on the eleven large fragments which will go on public display for the first time in nearly ten years. The tomb-paintings were acquired by the Museum in the 1820s and were constantly on display until the late 1990s. Since then, the fragile wall-paintings have been meticulously conserved, securing them for at least the next fifty years. The project has provided numerous new insights into the superb technique of the painters called by one art-historian ‘antiquity’s equivalent to Michelangelo’ - with their exuberant compositions, astonishing depictions of animal life and unparalleled handling of textures. New research and scholarship have enabled new joins to be made between the fragments, allowing a better understanding of their original locations in the tomb. They will now be re-displayed together for the first time in a setting designed to recreate their original aesthetic impact and to evoke their original position in a small intimate chapel. The gallery will include another fragment for the same tomb-chapel on loan from the Egyptian Museum, Berlin. Drawing on the latest research and fieldwork at Luxor, a computer ‘walk-through’ of the reconstructed tomb-chapel will be available in gallery with an interactive version online. Next to the paintings, 150 artifacts show how the tomb-chapel was built, how it remained open for visitors, and also the nature of Egyptian society at the time. Most of the objects are contemporary with Nebamun and reflect those depicted in his paintings. Some, however, contrast with the idealized world-view that is shown on elite monuments like the tomb-chapel and show that most people’s experience of life was not necessarily all about leisure and prestige as in the paintings. Spectacularly luxurious objects, such as a glass perfume bottle in the shape of a fish, are juxtaposed with crude tools of basic survival, such as a fishing net, to suggest that most of what we know of Ancient Egypt is about the small wealthy elite. The gallery is on the upper floor of the Museum next to the galleries of Ancient Egyptian funerary archaeology (the ‘mummy rooms’) which are the most popular galleries in the museum...."

More about Nesyamun

"What do Johann Sebastian Bach, Saint Nicholas, and the firstborn son of Pharaoh Rameses II all have in common? The answer? All their faces have been reconstructed using cutting-edge computer technology. Dr Caroline Wilkinson is a forensic anthropologist, recreating faces from human remains for archaeological and police investigations - bringing the past to life. Her workshop at the University of Dundee is covered in model heads, created using traditional methods of layering clay on top of a plaster-cast skull. Sharing the space is a large computer system. "Today we can use information from 3D surface scans or CT scans of the skull, import them, and use 3D modelling or 'virtual sculpture' to create the same muscles that we would create in real clay" said Dr Wilkinson. She has adapted technology originally developed for industry, for example when multiple exact copies of objects, such as engine parts, are required. Animators and artists next picked up the process and it is now widely used for 3D modelling.... Dr Wilkinson's pioneering reconstruction project was the skull of a 3800 year old Egyptian mummy which had already been through a CT scanner. The CT scan allowed Dr Wilkinson to see and remove layers from the original object.... "